Steven F. Hayward is the author of Greatness: Reagan, Churchill and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders, Age of Reagan (two volumes) and other acclaimed books. Last year the University of Colorado at Boulder brought Hayward on board as Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy, something of a breakthrough in diversity for the liberal university. But now the campus thought police have targeted the visiting scholar.

In a March interview with National Public Radio, Hayward addressed the subject of sexual harassment: “You know, my mother and my mother-in-law both said, ‘You know when those kinds of things happened to us, usually a lot worse 40 or 50 years ago when they were in the working world, they slapped people.’ Maybe we ought to get back to that.”

In an October 13, 2013 Powerline blog about Nadine Schweigert, a North Dakota woman who married herself, Hayward wrote:

So why is this gender-bending diversity mandate so prominent at universities these days? The most likely explanation is that it is simply yielding to the demands of the folks who dislike any constraint of human nature in what goes by the LGBTQRSTUW (or whatever letters have been added lately) “community.” I place “community” in quotation marks here because the very idea of community requires a certain commonality based ultimately in nature, while the premise behind gender-bending is resolutely to deny any such nature, including especially human nature.

These were “oppressive and discriminatory” ideas, according to Chris Schaefbauer, student government president of student affairs, and Caitlin Pratt, student government director of safety and inclusion. Hayward, they wrote, has engaged in “victim-blaming.” The onus should be on the harasser and “on the university to create an environment where people feel safe and supported in reporting conduct violations.”

Shaefbauer and Pratt charged that Hayward’s blog comments “invalidate the lived realities of transgender individuals and mock the LGBTQ community as a whole.” Further, “The lived realities and rights of women and LGBTQ individuals should not be open to be denied, dissected, refuted or used as talking points in a conflict between liberal and conservative politics.” So in the students’ concept of free speech, some ideas “should not be open” to challenge and examination, and even discussion. Those are rather strange sentiments for a university environment but they inspired faculty assembly chairman Paul Chinowski to go after Hayward.

“I found this offensive, bordering on what I think most people would say is hate speech,” Chinowski told colleagues. “If any (other) faculty member said this, we would find ourselves in a dean’s office or possibly on suspension for writing this. I applaud the students for having the nerve to stand up to this. The question is, are we going to allow this or condone this from someone in our own faculty?”

Chinowski further said: “I don’t think we should allow that behavior, even if somebody is doing it for effect,” he said. “It’s offensive, and there’s no place for that in this community.”

Law professor Aya Gruber said she didn’t want the faculty to become the “free speech police,” adding “I don’t like what he said, but I want the right to say that I don’t like what he said.” Hayward “has an absolute right to say what he wants, but along with that right, he has to expect this kind of backlash when you say things that are deliberately provocative and not very well thought out.”

Hayward teaches Constitutional Law II and one of his students, Will Hauptman, went on record that the professor maintains a respectful and professional classroom environment, does not promote a political agenda in class, and has even included the university’s suggested statement about preferred gender pronouns in his syllabus. Hauptman said the professor had never belittled anyone’s statements or ideas and “treats students with respect and courtesy.”

The ludicrous accusation of “hate speech” suggests that Hayward is not getting much respect and courtesy from politically correct student and faculty bosses who fancy themselves liberals. That should come as no surprise given the venue.

From 1990 to 2007 the University of Colorado at Boulder was the happy hunting ground of Ward Churchill, who falsely claimed to be a Native American to qualify for an affirmative action position in Ethnic Studies. Churchill also regarded the United States as a genocidal nation and denounced the victims of the 9/11 attacks as “little Eichmanns.” This hatemongering fraud held on for 17 years before the university fired him for plagiarism and fabricated research. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld his dismissal.

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There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.--January 27, 1838 Lyceum Address

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.--August 27, 1856 Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan

Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.--July 10, 1858 Speech at Chicago

Everything old is new again. Talk to people as I have from the former Soviet Union, from Asia and Eurasia, they'll tell you about the changes they saw on university campuses and in their neighbors when communism was on the rise. Can't happen in America? IS happening in America.